


Performance Anxiety

by MoMoTheEdgelord



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Children In Danger, Content Warning in tags, Cults, Self-Harm, The Usher Foundation, transcript
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23656165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoMoTheEdgelord/pseuds/MoMoTheEdgelord
Summary: Transcript for a Fan Episode of The Magnus Archives staring me and my friends RP characters whomsts twitters you can find at @eyelovelibary and @anteaterliveshttps://soundcloud.com/user-287136166/performance-anxiety
Relationships: friendship only - Relationship
Kudos: 2





	Performance Anxiety

Adria: Hows this work? Do you just turn on the tape and then what?

Marc: I just start like this.  
April 6th, 2017. Statement of Adria Hunter on the last time she felt fear and her first hunt. Statement taken directly from subject by Marc Coleman, Head Archivist for the Usher Foundation.

Adria: Do I go now?

Marc: Are you sure you want to?

Adria: Yeah why not? It’s not like I can feel fear anymore or anything, so what would be the matter?

Marc: That’s not what I meant. You heard what everyone says. If you make this statement, you're letting the… the Eye feed on your trauma. Are you sure you're okay with that?

Adria: I have no fear to feed on, nothing really changes what happened.

Marc: ...Fine. Whenever you're ready.

Adria: Ok. So, I was born and raised under The Church of The Ant-Eater. We had a lot of incredibly fun traditions that I don’t think I’ll be putting on record. But most importantly, we have a tradition that hunters, well... we have to go on a hunt before we can graduate. Before our fear is cut out and sacrificed.

My first hunt, I was around twelve I think? What? What’s that face?

Marc: Nothing. Go on.

Adria: Fine

I don’t really know when my birthday is. But the week leading up to graduation was tense, there was a sense of disbelief in my abilities from the other initiates. They were always whispering, “She’s too soft she’ll never make it. No, no, she'll never be able to kill her prey. She’ll play with it too much, it won’t be afraid, she'll lose her nerve. She’s weak.”

My anger built that week, getting stronger and stronger. I'd do it. I'd show them. The other initiates had no idea what I was capable of. I found myself getting more vicious as the days went by. I wouldn’t just be play-fighting, I’d be going at it unrestrained, ready to kill. The teachers encouraged me, but they would always stop me before the killing blow.

I wouldn’t just take them down, I'd hit them again and again even after they went down. I found myself always brimming with anger. I spent a lot of time shaking with anxiety and rage. Slowly, day by day, people found me more and more intimidating. They stopped bothering me and stopped talking to me, but I never heard them call me weak again.

Every minute, every second for that last week of training, I was pent up. I needed to kill, I needed to hunt, to stalk down my prey and watch the light fade from their eyes. If I had to wait any longer, I would have killed. One day, the teachers would have come in to find death waiting for them, everybody gone. Nobody but me, my bloody fists and the bodies on the ground. I started to force myself eerily calm. The hunt was waiting for me and I could already taste the blood.

I was already becoming a predator, something the other children would learn to fear if they hadn’t already. I could smell it when they talked to me, I could feel it in the way they stared at me. I could practically touch the sensation when my fists hit them. But it was strained, forced, unnatural, it didn’t feel complete. I wasn’t a hunter yet, and their fear reflected that. I was simply angry and scary. I wasn’t the thing that all living people fear, a natural predator designed to kill them and only them.

On the morning of my graduation, I could feel my heart beating strong. I was ready. I was excited. I had some doubts, but I threw those away, I trusted the hunt would let me win. The hunt would make me strike fear for it, and I followed it. I went upstairs, still in my pajamas, still in a haze.

The man put a blindfold on me as he took me to his car. I could hear the roar of engines and then...quiet, as he drove to the place where I would hunt. I had hoped for a jungle, a forest, some woods I could jump wildly in, moving from creature to creature, breaking each. But it wasn’t, I could hear the sounds of more and more cars.Traffic was heavy, the noise painful.

My blindfold fell loose as if it wasn’t even tied properly, and I was on the ground in the middle of a street. I didn’t know where my prey was, but I needed to find out. I needed to hunt or I would never be a real member. Just one of those dead initiates, just the failure who never even got a name.

I checked my pajama pockets as I ran around. There was a picture. I figured it had to be my target right? Why else would I have it? She… she looked like me but older, her hair long and beautiful, she had blue eyes like mine and a nose that looked eerily familiar. But she had to be in her early thirties late twenties. Old enough to be my mom….

I was afraid, afraid of my own anger about the fact I had to kill. It was performance anxiety and the fear of an audience. I could smell something in the crowd, it was familiar. I was being watched. I could see them prowling in the distance. Predator or prey, there was no in-between. Not in this world or any other.

I sniffed the photo, hoping for a clue, any clue. It had a distinctive smell to it, and I started to move, hoping to catch a whiff of someone like that. It smelled like a cheap burger king day job mixed with strawberries. The kind of person who could never afford to have a kid.

I looked back over the image and scanned the crowd for anybody who matched. The woman in the photo had a sad, tired expression, as if life had beaten her down. She wasn’t here, but I could smell her scent in the distance.

I followed and scurried through the streets, but other people stared at me, focused on me. A child in pajamas was too obvious. I needed to figure out a way to properly hide, blend in, or keep just out of sight.

But I didn’t have any money, and all the clothing stores catered to adults first and foremost. The only way I could be stealthy was by being the opposite of stealthy, a lure. I would be ‘looking for my Mommy.’ I started to ask random people, started showing them the photograph. I figured enough people looking or worried about me would mean that word would get back to my ‘Mom’. I found her eventually. Somebody pointed me to a specific burger king. I took a moment aside, I figured I'd need to do more than just show up, stab her, and leave. I couldn’t get away with that. I needed her to take me ‘home’ or somewhere private, kill her and find my way to my real home.

I went to an alley and slammed my head into some bricks, I think I managed to break my nose with the impact. It cracked and bled. I stumbled out of the alley, covered in dirt. I went into the burger king and started to cry for my ‘Mommy’. She smelled just like the photo, and she took me home. I don’t remember what she said in the strongest of detail. But she mumbled something about foster families, and how she could never afford to be a mom. I didn’t know if she cared about me really or just wanted me out of that shitty fast food joint.

She took me home, and I found some spare wire. I strangled her at night. She patched up my nose, and I strangled her for it. Her face looked like mine Marc, I barely hesitated.

Afterward, I went home. To my real home. I crawled through a window they left open by accident. They didn’t even notice I was back from my hunt for a couple of days. I just blended in, everyone either didn’t notice or was too afraid to question me.

When they finally noticed, I was called in for the surgery. They strapped me down and shaved my head to carve it open. I don’t want to talk about that more. If you want to know, you can just do that thing you do when you want to.

Marc: ...No. I wouldn't do that without your consent, Adria. I. Are you alright?

Adria sniffling loudly: I’m fine, I’m cool and confident still

[Marc pauses for a long time.]

Marc: Want some tea?

Adria pauses and makes a ‘Uhhhhhhh’ noise  
Adria: Could it be hot cocoa?

Marc: [relieved] Sure thing.

[Click]

Marc: The more I learn about the Hunt, the less I think I care for it. Up until Adria moved in, I'd been working under the assumption that all Hunters were solitary predators, like Lilya Sokolovsky. The Church of the Anteater, though...that's different from any Hunter I knew about. Maybe they've decided it's more efficient to hunt as a pack. I don't know. What they did to Adria, though…

I know I'm not in a place to talk, but that's unforgivable. I'm frightened for Adria. I don't know what not being able to fear means for her in this new, horrible world.

End recording.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you had fun! Thank's for reading


End file.
